The Commentariat -- July 6, 2020

Afternoon Update:

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Monday are here.

** Mr. Trudeau Regrets. Rob Gillis of the AP: Canada's "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has turned down a White House invitation to celebrate the new regional free trade agreement in Washington with ... Donald Trump and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Trump and López Obrador are due to meet Wednesday [in] Washington, but Trudeau spokesperson Chantal Gagnon said Monday that while Canada wishes the U.S. and Mexico well, Trudeau won't be there.... A senior U.S. administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be quoted by name, said Trudeau had multiple conflicts related to the start of Parliament and coronavirus regulations which require Canadians who travel abroad to quarantine for 14 days on return. The official said Trudeau has asked to speak with Trump by phone."

Fox "News" Regrets. That it aired a posed photo of Jeffrey Epstein with Melania & Ghislane Maxwell, but cropped Donald Trump from the photo. Mrs. McC: Yeah, I'll bet they "mistakenly eliminated" Trump's image.

Candace Buckner of the Washington Post: Christmas City Spirits of Bethlehem, Pa., in early March "suspended production of all drinkable alcohol and produced approximately 800 gallons of hand sanitizer for organizations, charities and workers risking their lives to combat the [corona]virus. According to the Distilled Spirits Council, 831 distilleries across the nation have made hand sanitizer for local communities. Only one distillery, however, has the distinction of producing it strictly for donation. Not a single one of the 4,000 four-ounce bottles of Christmas City Spirits' hand sanitizer, aptly named 'Corona Bullet,' was sold for profit." Definitely a feel-good story.

They name teams out of STRENGTH, not weakness, but now the Washington Redskins & Cleveland Indians, two fabled sports franchises, look like they are going to be changing their names in order to be politically correct. Indians, like Elizabeth Warren, must be very angry right now! -- Donald Trump, in his second racist tweet Monday.

"Trump Defends Confederate Flag in Latest Race-Based Appeal to White Voters." Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "President Trump mounted an explicit defense of the Confederate flag on Monday, suggesting that NASCAR had made a mistake in banning it from its auto racing events, while falsely accusing a top Black driver, Darrell Wallace Jr., of perpetrating a hoax involving a noose found in his garage.... Mr. Trump has increasingly used racist language and references to portray himself as a protector of the history of the American South.... 'Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX? That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!' Mr. Trump posted on Twitter on Monday." Here's an AP story.~~~

~~~ Lachlan Markay of the Daily Beast: "In a round of new digital ads, the Trump re-elect[ion campaign] asks people to support the president as he stands up to the angry mobs trying to tear down iconic memorials. In one specific ad, the endangered statue that the campaign spotlights happens to be the famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 'The President wants to know who stood with him against the Radical Left,' declared dozens of ads run over the weekend on pages for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. The ads featured a graphic with an image of the Christ the Redeemer statue above the text, 'WE WILL PROTECT THIS.' The photo appears to have come from an online database of free stock images.... There's no indication that the 125-foot sculpture, which sits at the peak of Corcovado mountain overlooking Rio, is at risk of vandalism or removal. It's also not clear how Trump or Pence might go about protecting it if it were threatened...." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: This was my first thought, which Markay expresses half-way through his post: "It was not immediately clear whether the Trump campaign was aware that the image it chose for its Facebook ads ... showed a statue in another country." I would just assume Trump's campaign staff & ad people are as culturally-aware as is Trump himself & they had no idea other countries had big ole statues of Jesus, too, the famous Rio statue being among them. ~~~

~~~ Asawin Suebsaeng of the Daily Beast: "... Donald Trump has decided to pivot heavily to culture-war bluster and hard-right posturing. A major part of that pivot appears to be turning his anger on people who don't like the same statues he does and comparing those enemies to Nazi 'fascists.' Shockingly, there are some in Trump's political orbit who aren't convinced this tactic will move voters as much as the president seems to think it will.... 'The question now is, Is the statue shit going to work?' said a senior Trump campaign adviser, adding that current polling was 'inconclusive' at best."

Jonathan O'Connell & Aaron Gregg of the Washington Post: "The Small Business Administration released information Monday about nearly 700,000 loans issued as part of the federal $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program since its launch in early April. The disclosure includes the names of 660,000 small businesses and nonprofit organizations that received at least $150,000 in funding, the most detailed yet on one of the largest economic stimulus packages created by the federal government. The data shows [show!] the government issued $521 billion in loans, with an average loan size of $107,000." A Politico story is here.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "States can require members of the Electoral College to cast their votes for the presidential candidates they had pledged to support, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Monday. In curbing the independence of electors, the court limited one potential source of uncertainty in the 2020 presidential election." An AP story is here.

Juliet Eilperin, et al., of the Washington Post: "A federal judge ruled Monday that the Dakota Access Pipeline must be shut down by Aug. 5, saying federal officials failed to do a complete analysis of its environmental impacts. The decision marks the second setback for President Trump's infrastructure push in just two days, underscoring the extent to which long-standing environmental laws represent an obstacle to his quest to expand domestic oil and gas production. U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg wrote that the federal government had not met all the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, a 50-year-old-law that the Trump administration is seeking to weaken.... The Dakota Access Pipeline, which opened in 2017, carries about half a million barrels of crude oil a day from North Dakota's Bakken shale basin to Illinois. The ruling means the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must conduct a more thorough analysis of how a leak in the Dakota pipeline could affect Lake Oahe, which collects water from the Missouri River and lies half a mile from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation." A Bismarck Tribune story is here.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The Trumpidemic, Ctd.

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Sunday are here. "New infections announced across the United States last week total more than 330,000, a record high that includes the five highest single-day totals of the pandemic." (Also linked yesterday.)

Derek Hawkins, et al., of the Washington Post: "Officials in states with surging coronavirus cases issued dire warnings and blamed outbreaks on early reopenings Sunday as the seven-day average for daily new cases in the United States reached a record high for the 27th straight day.... Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said it was 'too early to tell' whether the Republican National Convention could be held safely in Jacksonville, Fla., next month." The article is free to nonsubscribers. ~~~

~~~ Robert Barnes & Derek Hawkins of the Washington Post: "The Independence Day weekend concluded with dire predictions about the surge of coronavirus cases around the country and with national and local officials saying a rush to reopen fueled the spread of the novel coronavirus and outpaced efforts to care for its victims. 'We're right back where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the New York outbreak,' former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on 'Face the Nation' on CBS. 'The difference now is that we really had one epicenter of spread when New York was going through its hardship, now we really have four major epicenters of spread: Los Angeles, cities in Texas, cities in Florida, and Arizona. And Florida looks to be in the worst shape.'... FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn was pressed to analyze President Trump's comments Saturday that a vaccine would be ready 'long before the end of the year' and that 99 percent of the cases have been 'totally harmless.' Hahn dodged both in appearances on the Sunday talk shows.... Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego (D) attributed soaring case numbers in Arizona to the state's decision to resume business as usual before the virus was under control.... Gallego said federal officials had dismissed her requests to conduct community-based testing ... after people reported waiting in line for six hours at some testing sites."

Richard Oppel, et al., of the New York Times: "Early numbers had shown that Black and Latino people were being harmed by the [corona]virus at higher rates. But the new federal data -- made available after The New York Times sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- reveals a clearer and more complete picture: Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus in a widespread manner that spans the country, throughout hundreds of counties in urban, suburban and rural areas, and across all age groups. Latino and African-American residents of the United States have been three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbors.... And Black and Latino people have been nearly twice as likely to die from the virus as white people...." Mrs. McC: How disgusting is it that a legitimate news organization had to sue the CDC -- paid for with taxpayer dollars -- to get information critical to public health? (Also linked yesterday.)

Yoo Who! Wake Up & Smell the Teensy Particles. Apoorva Mandavilli of the New York Times: "The coronavirus is finding new victims worldwide, in bars and restaurants, offices, markets and casinos, giving rise to frightening clusters of infection that increasingly confirm what many scientists have been saying for months: The virus lingers in the air indoors, infecting those nearby.... The World Health Organization has long held that the coronavirus is spread primarily by large respiratory droplets that, once expelled by infected people in coughs and sneezes, fall quickly to the floor. But in an open letter to the W.H.O., 239 scientists in 32 countries have outlined the evidence showing that smaller particles can infect people, and are calling for the agency to revise its recommendations. The researchers plan to publish their letter in a scientific journal next week." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Sarah Knapton of The Telegraph, via Yahoo!: "Coronavirus may have lain dormant across the world and emerged when environmental conditions were right for it to thrive - rather than starting in China, an Oxford University expert believes. Dr Tom Jefferson, senior associate tutor at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM), at Oxford..., argues that there is growing evidence that the virus was elsewhere before it emerged in Asia.... Dr Jefferson believes that many viruses lie dormant throughout the globe and emerge when conditions are favourable. It also means they can vanish as quickly as they arrive.... Dr Jefferson believes that the virus may be transmitted through the sewage system or shared toilet facilities, not just through droplets expelled by talking, coughing and sneezing." --s

Maeve Reston of CNN was flummoxed by Donald Trump's "mystifying -- and dangerously misleading claim -- that 99% of coronavirus cases in America are 'totally harmless.'... There have now been at least 2.8 million cases of coronavirus in the United States, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. While the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 35% of cases are asymptomatic, those patients can still spread the virus. As of Saturday, Johns Hopkins estimated that the fatality rate for the US was 4.6%." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Reston's figures are a bit misleading. Researchers admit they don't know the long-term effects of the virus are, even among the apparently asymptomatic. But if 35% of today's victims are currently asymptomatic, then 65% felt symptoms. We know that among them, many had symptoms so severe they had to be hospitalized or seek other medical support. Extrapolating from a CDC summary, it appears that about 330,000 Americans have been hospitalized for Covid-19. That's about 11% of Covid victims who have been hospitalized, a figure that of course doesn't include the vast numbers of victims who were turned away from hospitals, sought other treatment or got no professional treatment at all. To claim that Covid is "totally harmless" to all but one percent of those who contract it is not just fuzzy math; it's a big honking lie. (There is one quasi-justification I can see for Trump's claim: the CDC has said that the number of Americans infected is ten times as high as reports indicate. That would bring the percentage of hospitalized patients down to 1.1%. That doesn't mean the virus was "totally harmless" to the other 98.9% of Covid victims, but it could explain away Trump's wild assertion.)

When Is 2 Greater than 130,000? When Joni Ernst Is Counting. Justin Baragona of the Daily Beast: "Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), when confronted with her previous criticisms of then-President Barack Obama's handling of the Ebola outbreak in 2014, claimed on Sunday morning that ... Donald Trump is 'stepping forward' in his response to the coronavirus pandemic that's now killed 130,000 Americans.... Despite Obama deploying 3,000 service members to Africa to contain the virus, and only 11 confirmed cases and two deaths recorded in the United States, Ernst at the time accused the president of 'failed leadership' on the disease.... The Republican lawmaker, however, took the opportunity to heap praise on the Trump administration for its response to the public health crisis while seemingly placing the blame on Democrats for any shortfalls.... Ernst's home state of Iowa, meanwhile, hit its all-time high in new coronavirus cases on Saturday, reporting 568 new COVID-19 infections."

Trumpsylvania, where all the people are white, all the women are hot, all the men are armed, and all the children go to above-average private schools:

Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "President Trump, with two speeches in two days, has turned the Fourth of July from a joyful and unifying patriotic celebration of America's founding values into a partisan political event. The damage could outlast his presidency.... Never in our lifetimes has the Independence Day holiday been used for such divisive and personal ends.... A portion of the country hears Trump's rhetoric as an uplifting message extolling the rich history of American success and greatness. The rest of the country recoils at a message seen as racist and divisive. As with all things Trump-related, there can be no middle ground. That's the inheritance this president is leaving to the country." Mrs. McC: Just love it when Sleepy Dan, the Both-Sides Man, gets slightly woke. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post: "... in [Trump's] view, schools are teaching kids to 'hate our country' with a 'far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance.'... 'If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished,' he said.... Trump is pushing a view of public education in the country that has long been espoused by many Republicans: that public K-12 schools and institutions of higher education are cauldrons of subversion where teachers mold children into being politically correct leftists." Mrs. McC: To be fair to Trump, many a child -- if she knew the word "fascist" -- would so describe her teacher or some other school employee -- like the Cafeteria Nazi! (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Benjamin Fearnow of Newsweek: "About 1,000 heavily armed militia, all of whom were Black, marched through Georgia's Stone Mountain Park on Independence Day, challenging white nationalist groups in the area to either come out and fight or join them in demonstrating against the government. Stone Mountain State Park officials said the Black militia group was peaceful, orderly and escorted by police Saturday as they called for the removal of the country's largest Confederate monument near Atlanta.... [T]he 'Not F**king Around Coalition' (NFAC) ... Founder Grand Master Jay told Newsweek via phone Sunday that the militia members at Stone Mountain on Saturday were '100 percent black' and they are not affiliated with Black Lives Matter. 'We are a black militia. We aren't protesters, we aren't demonstrators. We don't come to sing, we don't come to chant. That's not what we do,' he said." --s ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McC: Now will Trump be singing the praises of this Second Amendment group?

Crazy People News. Shawn Boberg & Dalton Bennett of the Washington Post: "For weeks, a mysterious figure on social media talked up plans for antifa protesters to converge ... [at Gettysburg National Park] on Independence Day to burn American flags, an event that seemed at times to border on the farcical.... As word spread, self-proclaimed militias, bikers, skinheads and far-right groups from outside the state issued a call to action, pledging in online videos and posts to come to Gettysburg to protect the Civil War monuments and the nation's flag from desecration. Some said they would bring firearms and use force if necessary. On Saturday afternoon, in the hours before the flag burning was to start, they flooded in by the hundreds -- heavily armed and unaware, it seemed, that the mysterious Internet poster was [a fake]...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

New York. Gary Craig & Ryan Miller of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle: "On the same weekend in which famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass 168 years ago delivered one of his most historically resonant speeches, a statue of Douglass was toppled from its base and left near the Genesee River gorge.... The Maplewood Park location includes Kelsey's Landing, where Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and others helped shuttle slaves to safety along the Underground Railroad. Across the United States, Douglass' July 5, 1852 speech, 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,' has been shared widely on social media and elsewhere as a reminder of the country's legacy of slavery and racism.... Douglass, a former slave, delivered the speech to the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society at Corinthian Hall in downtown Rochester."

Paul Sonne of the Washington Post: "Russia is once again threatening to become a major factor in a U.S. presidential election as long-standing fears about President Trump's deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin crystallize in a scandal over alleged Russian bounty payments targeting U.S. forces in Afghanistan.... In the days since the reports [of Russian bounty payments] became public, Trump has declined to criticize Putin or Russia, and senior administration officials say the White House isn't planning a response. Instead, Trump told Fox News on Wednesday that the entire affair is a 'hoax by the newspapers and the Democrats' and insisted he wasn't briefed on the intelligence in the first place because it was inconclusive." ~~~

~~~ Nic Robertson of CNN: "This past week, on ... Donald Trump's watch Russia and China have effectively re-aligned the coming world order. They didn't do it together, but both took advantage of uncertainty and unpredictability that Trump has helped create. It's far from clear that the next US President will be able to roll back the consequences of this week, which leave both Presidents Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Xi Jinping in Beijing more decisively in control of their own countries and more able to act assertively.... The question historians may well debate in the future is not whether Trump's presidency affected Putin's and Xi's decisions but by how much his delusions changed the world in their favor."

Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "Santae A. Tribble, whose wrongful conviction for a 1978 murder in Southeast Washington exposed decades of exaggerated claims about the reliability of FBI forensic hair matches, has died, his family said.... Tribble was exonerated in 2012 after serving 28 years in prison for the killing of a D.C. taxi driver, who died when Tribble was 17. DNA testing revealed that Tribble could not have contributed hairs found in what police said was a stocking mask worn by the attacker and left near the crime scene -- even though at trial, the FBI declared the hairs microscopically matched Tribble's, and prosecutors suggested the odds of a mismatch were 'one ... in 10 million.' Tribble's case and others ... helped trigger a federal review that in 2015 disclosed FBI examiners systematically overstated testimony in almost all trials in which they offered hair evidence against criminal defendants for two decades before 2000. The findings led the Justice Department to offer new DNA testing in cases with errors and launch a partnership with independent scientists to raise forensic science standards. The findings also led to a review of other forensic disciplines for similar 'testimonial overstatement,' although the Trump administration suspended the latter efforts." Emphasis added. ~~~

     ~~~ Rule of Thumb Trump. If it's possible to do the wrong thing, the Trumpies will do it.

Jerry Dunleavy of the Washington Examiner: "During the evening of July 4, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn shared a video of himself leading five other people in a recitation of the oath of office traditionally given to federal elected officeholders, ending the oath with a slogan associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. Flynn ... posted the Independence Day video of himself ... [and the others] in front of a bonfire. Flynn and the others ended the short video by quoting a popular QAnon slogan -- 'Where we go one, we go all!' -- after which they said, 'God bless America.'... The former national security adviser had added '#TakeTheOath' to his Twitter profile in recent days.... Flynn is popular among many QAnon supporters. Sidney Powell..., who took over Flynn's defense last year, denied that her client's video had anything to do with QAnon."

Elections 2020

Justine Coleman of the Hill: "President Trump will hold an outdoor rally in New Hampshire this coming weekend, his campaign announced Sunday. The president's next ... rally will gather supporters at Portsmouth International Airport on Saturday, July 11.... Health experts are still warning against large gatherings of people, saying they could intensify the current surge of cases in the U.S.... New Hampshire is one of two states where cases are considered to be decreasing, according to The New York Times." Mrs. McC: Now, Trump plans to kill some of my neighbors -- and maybe me -- to stroke his ego.

Ken Vogel, et al., of the New York Times: "The mutually beneficial relationships between the president and ... lobbyists is the latest evidence of the hollowness of Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign pledge to 'drain the swamp' by taking on the special interests, lobbyists and donors who had 'rigged the system against everyday Americans.' Mr. Trump's political kitchen cabinet is stocked with people who are thriving in that swamp." For example: When the CEO of Raytheon wanted a meeting with Mike Pompeo to facilitate a huge arms sale that Congress had nixed, he couldn't get one until he hired lobbyist David Urban to grease the wheels. After the meeting, Pompeo issued an emergency waiver -- "now the subject of congressional and inspector general investigations" -- that allowed Raytheon to sell missiles & bombs to Saudi Arabia & the U.A.E. "The story behind Mr. Pompeo's meeting with Raytheon, which has not been previously reported, is emblematic of the outsize influence wielded in Washington by Mr. Urban and a small group of other lobbyists and operatives who backed Mr. Trump when most of the K Street establishment was keeping its distance.... With Mr. Trump lagging in the polls, the lobbyists are seeking to protect that mutually beneficial relationship by working to re-elect him, underscoring the mix of politics and policy that has served them -- and their clients -- so well over the last three and a half years."

Allan Smith of NBC News: The anti-Trump Republican Lincoln Project "has become ubiquitous on social media in recent weeks as the president is bogged down by the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest. Its members include George Conway, husband of top White House official Kellyanne Conway, and prominent Republican operatives like John Weaver, Reed Galen, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens, who have worked on the George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney and John Kasich presidential campaigns. Founded in December, the group's stated mission is to 'defeat Trump and Trumpism' in 2020. Weaver said the Lincoln Project seeks to provoke a Trump response with its ads and social media ventures while targeting white voters who may traditionally vote Republican but are uneasy about the president." The group also sought to rile Trump; that was the easy part.

Alabama Senate Race. Surprise! Trump Preferred Candidate Is a Crook. Danny Hakim of the New York Times: "President Trump's favored Senate candidate in Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, is known for his career as a college football coach. But he also had a brief stint as co-owner of a hedge fund. It did not go well. A little more than a decade ago, after departing from Auburn University where he was head coach, Mr. Tuberville entered into a 50-50 partnership with a former Lehman Brothers broker named John David Stroud. Their ventures, which included TS Capital Management and TS Capital Partners -- T for Tuberville and S for Stroud -- turned out to be a financial fraud. Mr. Stroud was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and Mr. Tuberville was sued by investors, who accused him of fraud and violating his fiduciary duty to take care of their investments; he reached a private settlement in 2013. The episode has been seldom discussed in Mr. Tuberville's Republican primary campaign for the Senate, in which his opponent in the July 14 runoff is Jeff Sessions, the former senator and attorney general who became an object of Mr. Trump's ire.... The winner will face Doug Jones, considered perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat in the battle for control of the Senate." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Montana Gubernatorial Race. Bradley Warren in Montana Right Now: "Congressman Greg Gianforte and Lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Kristen Juras are suspending public events after a potential exposure to COVID-19. On Tuesday, Gianforte's wife, Susan, and Juras attended a fundraising event with Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend Kimblery Guilfoyle in the Big Sky area according to a spokesperson for the Gianforte campaign.... The Trump Campaign chief of staff for the Trump Victory Finance committee confirmed to The New York Times that Guilfoyle tested positive for COVID-19 in South Dakota." Gianforte is running for governor. Mrs. McC: Sadly, this means Gianforte will not have an opportunity in the near future to beat up any bespeckled reporters. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

** Carole Cadwalladr of the Guardian: "There is no power on this earth that is capable of holding Facebook to account. No legislature, no law enforcement agency, no regulator. Congress has failed. The EU has failed. When the Federal Trade Commission fined it a record $5bn for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, its stock price actually went up.... [T]his is a company that facilitated an attack on a US election by a foreign power, that live-streamed a massacre then broadcast it to millions around the world, and helped incite a genocide [in Myanmar].... If Facebook was a country, it would be a rogue state. It would be North Korea.... It's a nuclear weapon.... [I]t has continued to pump out relentless, unbelievable, increasingly preposterous propaganda even as it controls the main news distribution channels.... Facebook's harms are global. Its threat to democracy is existential.... It may turn out that Facebook isn't just bigger than China. It's bigger than capitalism." --s

WSAZ: "Dominion Energy and Duke Energy announced Sunday the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline due to ongoing delays and increasing cost uncertainty which threaten the economic viability of the project. According to a news release, despite last month's 7-2 victory at the United States Supreme Court, recent developments created a layer of uncertainty and anticipated delays for ACP.... The news release goes on to say, a series of legal challenges to the project's federal and state permits caused significant project cost increases and timing delays.... As a result, recent public guidance of project cost has increased to $8 billion from the original estimate of $4.5 to $5.0 billion. In addition, the most recent public estimate of commercial in-service in early 2022 represents a nearly three-and- a-half-year delay with uncertainty remaining." --s A Washington Post story is here.

Beyond the Beltway

Texas. Alex Horton of the Washington Post: "Army investigators have positively identified the remains of Spc. Vanessa Guillén, her family told The Washington Post on Sunday, more than two months after she vanished from Fort Hood. Remains discovered Tuesday in a shallow grave east of the Texas installation triggered a manhunt that ended when one suspect -- Spc. Aaron Robinson -- killed himself as officers closed in, the Army said. Robinson's girlfriend was charged with evidence tampering and said she helped dispose of the body, court records show. Guillén's disappearance, and her family's allegations that she was sexually harassed, drew attention from activists, lawmakers, celebrities and other soldiers. The family has also complained that the Army's search for the 20-year-old soldier lacked urgency and care at the highest levels."

Way Beyond

Jonathan Swan of Axios: "The news media has largely moved on, but foreign government officials remain fixated on John Bolton's memoir, 'The Room Where It Happened.'... Bolton's detailed inside-the-Oval revelations have raised the blood pressure of allies who were already stressed about President Trump's unreliability.... [For instance,] European officials, who have spent three and a half years fretting that Trump would withdraw the U.S. from NATO, are treated to a hair-raising account of just how close Trump came to announcing he would do just that. The behind-the-scenes maneuverings from Trump's team to stop that from happening suggest it's still a real possibility."

Hong Kong. Gathering Kindling for the Bonfire. BBC: "Books by pro-democracy figures have been removed from public libraries in Hong Kong in the wake of a controversial new security law. The works will be reviewed to see if they violate the new law, the authority which runs the libraries said. The legislation targets secession, subversion and terrorism with punishments of up to life in prison."

News Lede

New York Times: "Charlie Daniels, the singer, songwriter and bandleader known for his brash down-home persona and his blazing fiddle work on hits like 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia,' died on Monday in Nashville. He was 83."

Comments

[PD Pepe]

The Guardian piece that safari put on is an infuriating read. Talk about a virus spreading and killing–-Facebook has been acting as such for years. What do we know about that long meeting Trump had with Zuckerberg not too long ago–-the two for tea? what's good for me is good for thee?

"It comes, in the end, down to us and our wallets and what we say to these brands. Because the world has to realise that there’s no one and no thing coming to the rescue. Trump and Zuckerberg have formed an unspoken, almost certainly unstated, strategic alliance. Only the US has the power to clip Facebook’s wings. And only Facebook has the power to stop Trump spreading lies...

Sometimes you don’t realise the pivotal moments in history until it’s too late. And sometimes you do. It’s not quite yet too late. Just almost."

[Akhilleus]

PD,

Methinks that Fatty and Zuckerberg share a common disdain for the little people they fleece on a daily basis, both of them feeling like put-upon geniuses whose greatness is unappreciated by the ungrateful masses.

Well, they’ll show those little ants a thing or two. These two geniuses can do whatever the holy hell they want, and make themselves piles of filthy lucre into the bargain. And the US Congress (largely because of the Traitor-controlled senate), won’t lift a finger to stop either of them.

The Party of Traitors benefits mightily from the chaos, misapprehensions, lies, and propaganda spread by both Fatty and the Boy Genius, both of whom no doubt have as much contempt for that body as they have for every other entity, group, or individual that is not them.

Laws, ethics, morality? Those are inconveniences designed to hold back the little people. They are not for such as these two giants. (And they are not the only ones who believe that...the entire GOP and much of Wall Street feel the same way.)

[Ken Winkes]

On the confusing role of schools:

May be repeating myself here. For that, apologies, but this school business has been on my mind for a very long time.

I think of schools (public and private, a distinction that is itself representative of one of the contradictions that plague our polity) as a microcosm of society at large.

Another way to say the same thing: Schools are the messy laboratories where we experiement on ourselves, always one generation removed from the present. They are always a mess because they are tasked with maddeningly ill-defined and contradictorytasks.

Other than their primary role, that of keeping all those kids who are not working on their family farms off the streets, they serve both the past and the future, tasked with preserving various versions of our heritage and preparing their charges for equally varied visions of the future.

Though it may not be what we say schools are about, one way to took at them is to see them as the stage on which we act out the controversies that attend the versions of our past we wish to preserve and pass on to the next generation and the kind of future (different? the same?) we wish for our children.

We don't have to look far to find all the schisms in the system. Sex Ed, American history, biology, the controversies are all there, in the school board meetings, in the textbooks, in the classrooms, sometimes breaking out into the national media, but the one that has always most fascinated me is the one that doesn't make the headlines but is in many ways fundamental to all the others::

Should our schools be fostering in our children independent, creative thinking, as we often say they should but don't really mean, or blind, plodding obedience?

Should they be Democratic or Republican?

[Akhilleus]

Ken,

Your meditation on education (and I admit I had never really considered the interesting distinction between education that is private versus the kind that is public, and I mean that in a way that is far more fundamental than who pays the bills) and the role of schools as the primary agency of its provision, deserves much greater attention than it often receives.

Here again, confederates like DeVos see schools as boot camps for little goose stepping, Jesus praising soldiers for the Right, another battleground that progressives too often overlook, in the same way that voting rights, the essence of democracy, have been under attack for decades as progressives concerned themselves with thoughts about policy, assuming that voting would always be safe from the brigands.

Wrong.

But even though this topic requires far more space and thought, I wanted to add one more item to your list of distinctions and contrary positions:

“Should our schools be fostering in our children independent, creative thinking, as we often say they should but don't really mean, or blind, plodding obedience?”

You forgot blind plodding obedience and massive state induced ignorance.

Like the Republican approach to democracy which is viciously undemocratic, their idea of education implies huge helpings of useful ignorance.

[PD Pepe]

AK: As I was reading your comment, Michael Cohen came to mind. Here was someone truly loyal to his "Mr. Trump" for many years until the lid came off and he realized he'd been tossed out like an empty can. I've been fascinated by this relationship ––the extreme devotion to Trump who treated him on many occasions with distain. Here's what Cohen told Jeffrey Toobin who was doing a story on Michael.

"I actually enjoyed him, [Trump] interestingly enough. When he's good, he's great. When he's horrible, he's the worst human being on the planet. I mean it. He has no heart and no soul when he's mean."

The simplicity of those remarks strike me as pathetic. You give ten years of your life to a man that has no heart and no soul–––when he's mean. It should have been no surprise that loyalty was a one way street. Cohen did get his revenge by opening that can and revealing the contents but unfortunately it was a ripple on the deep state of affairs ala Trumpy. To watch this man denounce Trump as passionately as he had once defended him, calling him a racist, a con man, and a cheat was great theater. Democrats embraced him, and Republicans disparaged him as a turncoat and a liar.

During one of the exchanges Cohen said this:

"I'm responsible for your silliness because I did the same thing that you're doing now for ten years. I protected Mr. Trump for ten years!"

And that voice was carried away on the winds that have blown away so many other voices warning us of the storms that will come. This is hurricane season––what next big wreckage will we find ourselves in?

[Ken Winkes]

Akhilleus,

Both youth and the schools where we house them have revolutionary potential, which is what makes them a threat to the status quo.

[Marie Burns]

@Ken Winkes: I think of schools -- no matter how funded and run -- as the country's greatest socializers. And I don't mean what the teacher says. For many kids, the teachers are superfluous at best & socializing inhibitors at worst. We learn how the world works more from our fellow students than from our teachers. Of course I learned reading, riting and rithmetic from teachers, but I learned how to navigate "the real world" from other kids. Obviously, different schools in different environments teach different lessons, but when it comes to socialization, the real teachers are your peers.

It's true there are other venues where a child may learn different, or conflicting, messages: summer camp, Sunday school, the Scouts, social clubs, big family gatherings, neighborhood play groups, playgrounds, etc. But here again, the "socializers" tend to be our peers & not authority figures.

I do think that students this year, who are experiencing more than half a year of not-socializing, may grow up with different outlooks from the majority of us, who received 12 years or more of school socialization, but young people are adaptable, so the kids may catch up quickly.

[Ken Winkes]

Bea,

True, all true.

Socialization is certainly one of schools' effects, maybe as you say its "content" its most important "lessons," and since much of that process is unplanned and unsupervised, that element deeply worries conservatives--defined as those who want the future to duplicate the ideal past they remember.

Black kids, now Hispanic students speaking a different language, others with "foreign" ideas in our schools?

It's just too much. We won't have it.

Not all, but many "private" schools purposely exist to keep that unsettling public out.

Of course one of the effects of all private schools, as their name suggests, is to close doors to some, in contrast to the open doors implied in the word "public."

Another schism that's been with us forever.

[Ken Winkes]

States in the Rt red zone now 41.

Each day under the Pretender's leadership a more perfect Union.

[citizen625]

When talking about Facebook don't forget that Sheryl Sandberg is to Facebook and Zuck as Ivanka is to Agent Orange. These people play dress up, but underneath they're like Fritz Haber.

[Ken Winkes]

Randy Rainbow, Fast and Furious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lJondUzeKk

[Ken Winkes]

Am I right in thinking that in seeking diverse opinions, the Right has to push their envelope of evident hysteria ever farther?

I call this one "Mr. Gregg has an attack of the vapors."

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/505924-judd-gregg-the-coming-biden-coup

[Marie Burns]

@Ken Winkes: I never would have been a fan of Judd Gregg's, but I particularly despised him after he decided he was too good to serve in Barack Obama's Cabinet. Someone who used to live in my house, however, must have liked him a lot. The key to my basement door was attached to a brass fob with Gregg's name deeply embossed on it. The door let mice in & couldn't be properly weatherstripped, so I had it replaced, with a new lockset. But I'm sure that precious Judd Gregg key fob is around here somewhere.